Gstaad
I was reading in these here pages Julie Burchill’s review of Candace Bushnell’s Is There Still Sex in the City? when one of Julie’s pearls struck me like a stiff left jab in the noggin: ‘Those who have persisted in carrying on creakily have become increasingly embarrassing.’ Ouch! Could she have had the poor little Greek boy in mind? Of course not, I told myself, but then again… Never mind. A little paranoia at my age is normal.
I felt better the next day when a Dutch TV crew of five arrived in the Alps to film a programme called How to be a Man. It stars one man, me, and it will be shown on Dutch national television, airing in November. Yippee! Margriet van der Linden, a statuesque Viking-like blonde, a real pro, put me through the ringer. Rarely have I been asked so many intelligent questions, challenging at times but never intrusive or embarrassing. We spent three days talking about manhood in the age of #MeToo, and filming as I mixed it up in karate training with my sensei Richard Amos.
More about karate later, but knowing how to be a man nowadays is quite tricky. If you read the lachrymose prose of, say, Roger Cohen in the New York Times, what passes as a man of good sense and taste translates into someone without courage or originality. (Actually, it’s worse: reading Cohen reminds me of a queasy teenager squeezing his pimples.) My definition of manhood? Having a sense of duty that means you never leave a wife, but also a sense of entitlement that means you never give up a mistress. The Dutch lady was very skilled at taking me through my life story — it was obvious she had read The Spectator columns with evangelical zeal because she knew all about me.
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